People are always kvetching that they can’t edit their comments after they’re posted, and asking me why there is no editing feature. The reason is simple: WordPress doesn’t provide one for my website. So please reread your comments carefully before you press the “post” button.
And, if you’ve really screwed up, put in the wrong html command so that everything in the thread turns into italics, or something equally dire, just send me a personal email* asking me to do an edit. I can go into comments and fix them, though I never do except at a reader’s request.
That said, please make such requests sparingly.
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*To find the email, just Google “Jerry Coyne University of Chicago”
kthxbye
14 Comments
I use the Ajax Edit Comments plugin and it works pretty well. The window for allowing the writer to edit the comment is configurable if you are worried about maintaining the integrity of the written record.
WEIT is hosted at WordPress.com
Plugins are only applicable to self-hosted blogs and web sites using the WordPress.org software
Mac users have long had a feature called TextEdit which has, among other things, a spelling check. It also allows the writer to reread whatever was written (not a bad idea). TextEdit material can then be copied into the comments error free (or at least with fewer errors – it can’t edit grammar and thinking.
Or close parentheses, apparently.
2shay!
It’s spelling checker doesn’t cover French, it seems.
Or misplaced apostrophes.
I have saved myself much embarrassment by copy-pasting my comment into the “Real-Time HTML Editor” website. For some reason, it ignores carriage returns and mooshes together paragraphs, but you can easily see if you’ve gone wrong with the HTML.
If you’re saying it removes newlines in the text between tags, it because that’s what HTML is suppose to do. All sequences of white space characters (space, tab, newline) are counted as a single space by HTML, unless you take special precautions to preserve formatting).
The Comment text area on the WordPress site is a quasi-HTML editor that preserves formatting by inserting the appropriate HTML tags for paragraphs, indent etc. (and of course allows for a subset of standard HTML tags to be included).
It’s too bad there’s no preview button at least.
Unless it changes the meaning, don’t worry about it. Or put a disclaimer that it was sent from your Iphone5.
You, sir, are incredibly accommodating! Editing comments for readers, wow!
The ability to edit is one of the reasons I like DISQUS. The main negative is that all your comments on all DISQUS sites you use, are available for everyone to see; there’s no privacy at all. I think we should have control of this feature. I really would rather not have all my interests showing and giving everyone the ability to build a profile on me.
It’s not just dodgy HTML and spelling mistakes that can catch one out. It’s also WP’s nesting which can (if one isn’t very cunning) shift a sarcastic retort to a statement by Mr X so that it looks as if it’s criticising the rebuttal of same by Ms Y.
It would probably be fair to say that many complaints about WP’s lack of a preview/sandbox function are the result of reading one’s comment on the page and realising it didn’t say quite what one thought it did.
Of course I’ve never done that…